The BMW forum game is honestly pretty twisted. Full of back room deals with vendors struggling for dominance of one another attempting to get every last dollar from every last user. Some may say this is business but on some websites this is how they extort money. Pay enough to get preferential treatment and your competition will find their posts are deleted, fans silenced, censorship is employed, and those who speak out are banned. This is exactly what ModBargains is experiencing.

ModBargains was forced off of BimmerPost due to underhanded tactics and came to BimmerBoost looking for an open and fair atmosphere. This website is known by its users and vendors alike as the place that does not play BimmerPost's censorship and banning games favoring certain vendors. To put it mildly, you can buy yourself a favorable position on BimmerPost whereas here we expect vendors to stand on their own two feet. So if a user has something to say, and that something may be bad, we favor the vendor making things right with their customer. This certainly doesn't help the bottom line but respect isn't something you can buy. It's these dirty politics that are one of the main reasons that BimmerBoost and the GermanBoost network exist and are thriving.

So what happened? ModBargains was on the wrong end of these politics and now any positive reviews of them are being systematically deleted to make it appear as if nobody has anything postiive to say about them. Additionally, if you are on BimmerPost and wish to say something positive about ModBargains, you will be banned and the name will come up censored. The right to free speech or even at the very least for members of the BMW community to voice their pleasure with a vendor are not things allowed if it isn't a vendor who is paying off the right person the right amount in the right manner.

This was sent to BimmerBoost from a disgruntled BimmerPost member who attempted to say he was happy with ModBargains:

"You didn't hear this from me... I don't want bimmerpost knowing I am telling you about it, but I read your thread about shift s3ctor sponsorship and thought you would be interested in hearing this.

I guess they are now censoring their own forum users. Anytime somebody posts the word "modbargains" it appears as "***********" instead. Popular threads mentioning ModBargains are censored and then closed or completely deleted. example: http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=769987

They also are deleting positive customer review threads in the feedback section and keeping the negative review threads on their forum. There are over 100 positive customer reviews in the last 3 months that have been deleted.

There's an old saying... "Give a person enough rope and they just might hang themselves." That might apply here... censoring the internet like this is simply not acceptable... especially a public forum. I think it's only a matter of time before people notice. A lot of the customers don't know their positive reviews have been deleted. Many of them haven't realized their posts are being censored and closed...[/quote]

So how about that? Hundreds of positive reviews are being deleted yet a handful of negative reviews, which obviously ModBargains won't even be allowed to address, are allowed to stay in order to sway public perception and the users are being treated like blind sheep. Is this a power ploy by another vendor in SoCal who goes head to head with ModBargains? You be the judge. Regardless, it's happening and it's sickening.

BimmerBoost does not like having to link to its competition but there are times you put pride aside and do what is right. In this case, letting people know how business is conducted "over there" versus here and how it affects you, the enthusiast.

BimmerBoost isn't afraid of BimmerPost and isn't afraid to make these issues known. We are the voice of the BMW community and this kind of thing won't be silenced. BimmerBoost thanks its vendors who want to help change the currently corrupt climate that exists in the BMW forum world. And if we have to do it ourselves then so be it.

I would say it goes deeper than u think though. Most of the newbs aren't newbs. If u look at join dates and post history, u can pick up on the fact they are fake accounts. If u choose to get specific and have a good memory, u can see that since u can change ur screenname, they can give false impressions regularly. If you choose to get even deeper, and pick up on certain mannerisms and verbage, u can easily see that the same people post from multiple accounts. This is FACT.
I personally have seen multiple login names saved on computers at certain places. Cross reference and you can see some very shady practices going on..

Think the guy with a car as his avatar is legit because he has an avatar of a car? Wrong. Do a deep enough search and u will see said person on forum doesn't geographically correlate to the actual owner of said car in the avatar, according to where the original car pic was posted

I would say it goes deeper than u think though. Most of the newbs aren't newbs. If u look at join dates and post history, u can pick up on the fact they are fake accounts. If u choose to get specific and have a good memory, u can see that since u can change ur screenname, they can give false impressions regularly. If you choose to get even deeper, and pick up on certain mannerisms and verbage, u can easily see that the same people post from multiple accounts. This is FACT.
I personally have seen multiple login names saved on computers at certain places. Cross reference and you can see some very shady practices going on..

Think the guy with a car as his avatar is legit because he has an avatar of a car? Wrong. Do a deep enough search and u will see said person on forum doesn't geographically correlate to the actual owner of said car in the avatar, according to where the original car pic was posted

damn, you've been doing some serious surveillance!

i haven't had the best experience with modbargains but what the post is doing is just unethical. the post can pull MB's sponsership but can they legally censor specific posts referencing them after the fact?

i haven't had the best experience with modbargains but what the post is doing is just unethical. the post can pull MB's sponsership but can they legally censor specific posts referencing them after the fact?

There is nothing illegal about censoring posts on a privately owned forum. As long as those posts being censored are not illegal by nature. In other words, if they were censoring posts about child pornography instead of reporting it to the proper authorities then they would be illegal. But this is nothing like that. It's just shady $#@!s taking advantage of kids on the internet by controlling the flow of information.

Again, what goes around, comes around and I have found that you never know when the one person you piss off is the person who will bring you down. At the end of the day some of the most respected vendors on the east coast have no affiliation, sponsorship or activities on BimmerPost despite the traffic it receives. When you see businesses choosing not to participate in a forum despite the exposure it would provide, THAT SAYS IT ALL.

I know a person who works relentlessly to put an end to it.

Few vendors like their policies other than those who benefit (Vishnu, ESS, etc,) but they can't ignore the money. It's going to take offering close to similar sales to really change the game when vendors can just dump them outright. Higher quality is only appreciated by a handful, most vendors only value sales.

There is nothing illegal about censoring posts on a privately owned forum. As long as those posts being censored are not illegal by nature. In other words, if they were censoring posts about child pornography instead of reporting it to the proper authorities then they would be illegal. But this is nothing like that. It's just shady $#@!s taking advantage of kids on the internet by controlling the flow of information.

There is little any single vendor can do about the poor e90post management. I know at some point Internet Brands made them an offer but they were unable to come to terms. Which is shame. I'd be happy to pay $1500/mo (3x what they charge now) to reach their readership if management and policies were changed. Ultimately though forums like this one, n54tech, etc, are whittling away at their readership and vendors are starting to see the light. There are a lot of other places to spend advertising dollars these days. A lot more than there were in 2007 when we were banned.